What is RSS? How to follow the news without algorithms

By Omid Jamshidi · Published 17 October 2026 · 6 min read

What an RSS feed is, how a feed reader works, what it does better than social media feeds and where its limits are – plus a simple way to get started.

Most people today find news through social networks, search engines or the recommendations of an app. In all of these, a program decides what you see and in what order – usually based on what keeps you scrolling the longest. RSS works the other way round: you choose the sources, and you see everything they publish, newest first. This guide explains what RSS is, how to use it and where it reaches its limits.

What RSS is

An RSS feed is a small, machine-readable file that a website publishes alongside its normal pages. It lists the site's latest items, and for each one it usually contains:

• the headline,
• a link to the full article,
• the date and time of publication,
• often a short summary, sometimes the full text.

A feed reader (also called an RSS reader or news reader) checks the feeds you have subscribed to at regular intervals and shows you new items as they appear. You do not need an account on each website, and you do not need to visit each site to see whether something new has been published.

There are two common formats: RSS, which first appeared at Netscape in 1999 and is widely used in its version 2.0 (RSS 2.0 specification), and Atom, which was standardised in 2005 (RFC 4287). For readers the difference does not matter: every common feed reader understands both. Podcasts, by the way, are also distributed through RSS feeds – the podcast app on your phone is a specialised feed reader.

Why follow the news with RSS?

You decide what you see. A feed reader shows the sources you chose, nothing else. There are no "suggested" posts and no items pushed in because they are popular.

Chronological order. New items appear in the order they were published. Nothing is quietly hidden because an algorithm assumed it would not interest you.

Nothing gets lost. A feed reader keeps items until you have read them or marked them as read. If you are away for a day, you can catch up instead of relying on whatever a timeline happens to show.

Fewer distractions. A list of headlines has no comments, no like counts and no autoplay videos. You decide which story is worth opening.

More privacy. The feed reader fetches the feeds, so the websites do not see each of your visits to check for news. When you open an article, you do visit the publisher's site, of course. Keep in mind that the feed reader itself – especially a web service – can see which feeds you follow, so it is worth reading its privacy policy.

It works for many kinds of sources. Besides news sites, many blogs, scientific journals, government press offices, YouTube channels and podcasts offer feeds.

The limits of RSS

RSS is not perfect, and it helps to know its weak points:

• Not every site offers a feed, and some hide it well. Social networks generally do not offer feeds for their posts.
• Many feeds contain only headlines or short summaries; to read the whole story you open the article on the website. Articles behind a paywall stay behind it.
• Feeds can break. When a website is redesigned, its feed address sometimes changes or disappears without notice.
• Too many feeds create overload. If you subscribe to fifty busy news sites, you will face hundreds of new items a day – the opposite of calm, focused reading.

How to get started

1. Choose a feed reader. There are web services, phone apps and desktop programs, both free and paid – for example Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire or the feed function built into the email program Thunderbird. Pick one that runs on the devices you use, and check its privacy policy.
2. Find the feeds. Look for the orange RSS symbol or a link labelled "RSS" or "Feeds", often at the bottom of a page. Even easier: paste the address of a website into your feed reader – most readers find the feed automatically. Many sites use addresses such as /feed/, /rss or /feed.xml.
3. Start small. Begin with five to ten sources you really want to follow. You can always add more.
4. Sort into folders. Group feeds by topic – for example "World", "Economy", "Technology" – so you can read one area at a time.
5. Mix perspectives. Follow outlets with different editorial lines and from different countries. Comparing how they report the same event is one of the best ways to understand it; our guide How to read the news critically explains how to do that.
6. Read the full article. A headline and a summary are a starting point. Before you form an opinion or share a story, open the original report.

Tips against information overload

• Use "mark all as read" without guilt. A feed reader is not an inbox you have to empty.
• Unsubscribe from feeds you keep skipping.
• Put very busy sources in their own folder and look at them only when you have time.
• Set fixed times for reading the news instead of checking constantly.

How Omid57.info uses RSS

Omid57.info does part of this work for you. Our server reads the public RSS and Atom feeds of a selection of established news outlets every few minutes and shows their latest headlines in five language editions, sorted by time and divided into sections such as politics, world, economy, technology, culture and sports.

For each item we show the headline, the name of the outlet and the time of publication; for some outlets also a short excerpt of up to 160 characters taken from the feed. For press publishers based in Germany, the EU or the European Economic Area we show only the headline. We do not show the outlets' images, we do not rewrite the news, and every headline links to the full article on the publisher's website. Items disappear from the lists automatically after a few days.

The difference to a personal feed reader: Omid57.info gives you a quick overview of several outlets and languages without any setup, while a feed reader lets you build your own selection. Both can be combined. Which outlets each edition uses, and how you can suggest a source, is explained in the FAQ.

Conclusion

RSS is an old, simple technology, and that is its strength. It puts you back in charge of what you read and in what order, without an algorithm in between. It does not replace careful reading – but it makes it easier to see the news as it comes in, from sources you have chosen yourself.